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Europe's hottest startups 2014: Barcelona

In the past year, the Catalan capital has proved itself a hub for global businesses -- online travel company eDreams ODIGEO was valued at £945 million after going public in April, and software portal Softonic announced 125 million monthly users (an IPO is rumoured). "Superstars like these make Barcelona important, because they're world leaders," says Christopher Pommerening of Active Venture Partners. The city's appeal is partly down to Spanish government incentives such as simplifying the visa process for entrepreneurs outside the EU. Barcelona is also home of the international trade show Mobile World Congress. "Every startup believes they have to create software first, focusing on the internet of things and mobile big data," Pommerening says. "Local startups need to be aware that English is at the heart of company culture, otherwise they'll just stay local."

Catchoom CEO David Marimon

Nick Wilson

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Europe's hottest startups 2014: Paris

ByJoão Medeiros

The image recognition company launched its CraftAR software tool for businesses this year, allowing users to create augmented reality (AR) additions to physical products such as printed ads, viewable via a phone app. The system enables drag-and-drop assembly of AR programs, with content management tools. "We believe in actionable augmented reality, not gimmicks," says CEO David Marimon (above). Catchoom claims it processes three million interactions every month and is in partnership discussions with "key players in the smart glasses arena". Wonder who that could be...

Europe's hottest startups 2014: Helsinki

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Carrer de Pallars 99, 08018 Barcelona

Before it had even released its first game, mobile developer Omnidrone had raised $2 million (£1.2m). The founders all hail from California games company Digital Chocolate, but came to Europe seeking fresh challenges. "We decided to do something smaller, with quicker decisions," says cofounder Gerard Fernandez. Each game will be developed by teams of six to eight developers, and the first, aimed at "mid-core gamers", will be out soon.

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Europe's hottest startups 2014: Moscow

ByNicholas Tufnell

IIIA-CSIC, Campus de la UAB, Bellaterra, Barcelona

No human being will have to listen to customer complaints again if this spin-off from Spain's Artificial Intelligence Research Institute gets its way. Founded in 2011 by Sindhu Joseph (above, foreground; CTO Rosh Cherian, rear), CogniCor is multilingual and deals with simple complaints through automation and machine learning. It's aimed at telecommunications, but has its sights set on the banking, insurance and transportation sectors, and plans to move into the UK, US and Germany. It claims to resolve 75 per cent of complaints automatically, taking about six minutes to complete.

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Europe's hottest startups 2014: Tel Aviv

ByMadhumita Venkataramanan

Marfeel helps online publishers create optimised web apps for touch devices. The company won Madrid's SeedRocket startup competition in 2011, and in the next 18 months secured £1.3m in funding and clocked up 100 customers. That equates to more than 100 million users reading more than a billion Marfeel pages.

The secure online voting company appeared in our 2012 list and has since secured around £30m from, among others, Vulcan Capital and Balderton. It has absorbed competitors in the US, Brazil and Europe, and its revenue grew by 72 per cent in the past year.

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Europe's hottest startups 2014: Amsterdam

ByOlivia Solon

333 Carrer de Valencia, 08009 Barcelona

Launched in June 2013, this "mobile local flea market" app has already been downloaded 1.5m times and has 500,000 active monthly users. "Everything was crazy from the very beginning," says cofounder Agustín Gómez, "so we decided to move very fast and land in the UK and France". The Wallapop team wanted to create a simple platform to help users "find new, sustainable ways of consuming".

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Europe's hottest startups 2014: London

ByOlivia Solon

By April 2014, just two months after coming out of beta and having acquired €550,000 in seed funding, the free, online-survey-creation tool already had 60,000 sign-ups and 90,000 questionnaires created.

Typeform makes form-building rather enjoyable, thanks to its elegant and simple user interface. Monthly payment plans unlock features such as Logic Jump, which moves users around questions based on their answers.

Viktor Nordstrom and his cofounders are democratising the demand for slick 3D graphics in business presentations. "Creating and distributing [3D] has hurdles: licence fees, production time, and platform fragmentation," says Nordstrom. CL3VER's browser-based software turns design files into interactive 3D presentations. With £475,000 of seed funding, the startup is on track to launch iOS and Android apps, and is building Oculus Rift compatibility.

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By April 2014, 160,000 photos had been taken via the AudioSnaps app - and 1.8 million had been listened to. The app enriches your shots with background sound: "We're told photography is about capturing moments, but in fact we're just capturing images - the emotion and environment gets lost," says CEO Marc Sallent. In February it signed a deal with a "top five" smartphone manufacturer to come pre-installed on its devices.